In the 20th Century, businesses used print, TV and Radio as the preferred marketing media to take their products and services to market. To flex your advertising muscles today, you also need to add the internet to the mix. Unlike traditional forms of advertising, the internet easily crosses most borders and allows businesses “in the know” to Geo-target their ads to any regional or local level they desire.
Every business today is trying to take advantage of the leverage that the internet provides. This process is made more complicated because the internet is a multi-media platform. Not only can it provide a media-rich experience on every page, it can also provide access to many forms of marketing that even includes analogs of their traditional counterparts like TV, Radio and print. Better still, it also provides superior tracking and analytical feedback to make sure your marketing is actually working!
You've just completed your manuscript. Congratulations! Now comes the next step, having your book edited and possibly represented by a professional. While that seems like a simple task to accomplish, finding a professional who is ready, willing and able to take your manuscript to the next level is a daunting task. In fact, it can be an expensive and potentially perilous journey that can prove more of an adventure than the one presented in your book. My blog this week cover a number of ways in which unscrupulous editors, book doctors and "agents" try to convince authors to part with their hard-earned money.
If it looks too good, it probably isn't.
My co-host of the Good Books Online Radio show sent me an email that sounded like a heck of a deal. A company was offering a package for $695 that purported to offer everything from editing and book cover creation, to formatting and publication on amazon.com. The advertisement itself included a toll-free number. Calling the number led to a "consultant" that quickly made me understand that the $895 price was only valid for eBooks of 100 pages in length or less. For more lengthy manuscripts, the prices quickly rose to 4 figures. There were also a lot of restrictions on edits made to cover art as well. I asked to see a contract and I am still awaiting its arrival. I'm not holding my breath.
When it comes to proofreading, paying more than a dollar a page is excessive unless there are major holes in the plot or other serious character deficiencies. I know this for a fact, since GoodBooks.Online provides this service for authors. Book cover creation can be had by a skilled graphic designer for $500 or less, regardless of the number of edits. Having your book formatted for inclusion on amazon.com or for print could also set you back a couple hundred dollors, but it's worth it to get it done right. The trick is to make sure that the editor and/or designer will deliver the service at the price they quoted. You should also never work with a company that asks for all the funds to be paid up front. Especially if the company is not located in the US. Try getting a refund from an offshore firm can be next to impossible.
Agent Smagent
Another area of concern to authors is getting an agent to represent them. The classical interpretation of a literary agent is an emissary that will act in the author's interest in dealing with publishers as well as other entities that are interested in licensing a book. As such, an agent will derive a commission for fees received from the book. This includes everything from advances, as well as a percentage of royalties received from book sales, movie deals, licensing and merchandising. A good agent can be worth their weight in gold to an author. A bad one can be a nightmare, since agents invariably require the exclusive right to deal in the author's behalf. If the agent misrepresents their connections, becomes incapacitated or just decides to sit on their hands, an author can be in a world of trouble.
Even worse are "agents" who insist on being paid before they deliver the goods. A reputable agent will never ask an author for money. They get paid a piece of the money they make by representing in essence selling the authors books. If you find yourself speaking to an "agent" that suggests you send him or her money for reading fees, expenses, or any other reason, run do not walk to the nearest exit. Even if an agent has a legitimate need to be compensated for such things as postage, overseas phone calls and the like, they should be willing to take these expenses out of the fees they generate for the author.
Speaking of fees, whether you are dealing with an agent, a publisher, an editor or book printer, make sure you receive an itemized contract that details the services to be performed and the rights that you as well as the other party is entitled. That's another way for an underhanded party to dig deep into your pocket, by using bait and switch tactics. Even worse, once you sign an agreement, you will be held accountable to it. This could not only have a deleterious effect on your current book, but subsequent books as well. (Always have an attorney read over any agreement given to you that concerns your books.)
Onc horror story I will share with you was from a client who had contracted a company to edit her cookbook, create the cover art and print 1,000 copies. By the time the process was finished, she had paid more than $25,000 only to realize after the fact that she now had no way of publishing her book electronically. Even worse was the fact that the publisher held the rights to the cover art and that the contract bound her to the publisher for all subsequent printing of her cookbook.
When you consider that her cookbook retailed for $19.95, there was no way for her to even break even should she sell every single copy she had printed. In short, the only thing that got cooked was her goose.
Speaking of contracts, any legitimate agent will be more than happy to provide you with their terms, commissions, marketing, distribution and sales list in advance of the contract. Any agent that tells you that all or part of this information is confidential is a sure sign that you need to look elsewhere. Also beware of agents who actively solicit you. Unless your previous title on amazon resulted in 6-figure sales, there is no reason that a legitimate agent will seek you out. They don't have to since they are buried in queries and book proposals every single day.
Beware that there are businesses created around the premise of milking authors while returning little or no services of value. Some of these agencies are well-heeled and can afford to advertise in the toniest of periodicals, as well as online. Before you wind up getting fleeced by a predatory agency, publisher or printer, below are the top-10 questions you need answered:
How long has your agency been in business?
What are your credentials as an agent?
What authors do you represent?
Can you provide me with references. (Don't take endorsements on their page from satisfied "authors" as gospel. It's far too easy to create these yourself.)
Do you charge a reading fee?
What other front fees do you charge?
What kind of expenses will you be reimbursed for and how will those expenses be handled.
Do you use outside resources, or is my book going to be handled in-house? (A number of underhanded publishing businesses outsource most of their services, making them little more than a broker.)
When can I see a copy of the agency agreement?
Has your agency ever been sued?
Even if you receive a satisfactory response for each of these questions, do your due diligence online by checking for good and bad reviews, complaints and scam reports for both the agency and the agent. If you find no reviews whatsoever this is a sign that the agent or agency is new, or that it changed its name due to negative reviews. Do your research well and you will have a reasonable chance at being a successful author. Do it poorly or not at all and you could wind up derailing your writing career before it ever gets started.
Carl Weiss is an author and president of Working the Web to Win, an online marketing company in Jacksonville, Florida. He is also co-host of Good Books Online, a weekly online radio show and YouTube series.
With a title like, “What are they up to now?”, you might
think I’m writing about my kids, the presidential candidates, politicians in
general, or some other high-profile group. What I’m talking about in today's blog are Insurance Companies. You see, earlier this
week I attended a two-day conference presented by the Florida Association of
Public Insurance Adjusters. The conference is billed as an educational and
networking event designed to improve our skill sets, become better at what we
do, and network with other industry professionals.
One of the main takeaways from the conference was learning
about significant trends in insurance industry tactics and strategies. These
strategies are usually marketed as “consumer protections”, which also just
happen to help insurance companies stuff billions more into their collective
coffers. A happy coincidence, I’m sure (that’s sarcasm, for those of you who
are unfamiliar with my writing style). Those of us whose job it is to protect
the insured from their own insurance companies, see these tactics and
strategies for what they really are, profit boosters.
If you're like most authors, your workload is overwhelming. There are only twenty-four hours in a day, but you keep losing time. You're drowning in work and are wasting precious time trying to serve too many masters. Why spend hours on tasks which aren't your strengths? When you want to do less and write more, a virtual author assistant is the way to go.
In order to write, publish and promote books, there are certain tasks that must be accomplished. The author can choose to do these him or herself, but the cost of the author’s time could often be much more effectively spent on revenue-generating activities.
A Virtual Author Assistant (VAA) is a business professional who provides virtual services for an authors. Performing certain services can make the author’s life so much easier. A VAA plays many of the roles and takes on many of the responsibilities that fall to the author, but which the author may not have the time or expertise to take on. However, their main responsibility is focused on giving authors more time to write.
A Virtual Author Assistant Has Different Skills They Specialize In.
The author’s assistant does a wide variety of work, and may specialize in one or more aspects of the author’s workload. Those specialized skills usually fall under two categories: administration and marketing.
On the administration side:
Sending information about the authors/books to those who request it;
Updating websites;
Organizing spreadsheets;
Pulling sales reports;
Setting speaking engagement;
Doing research and fact checking;
Proofreading and much more.
On the marketing side:
Following up with individuals who will be reviewing the manuscript;
Creating book jacket copy;
Running street teams;
Creating newsletters.
What Kind Of People Use A Virtual Author Assistant?
Every bestselling author has an author’s assistant – someone the author can call on to do many of the tasks that surround the successful completion, publishing and marketing of a book. You need someone who can make sure the books you’ve written are professionally edited, and printed and delivered on time. Where are you going to find the time to do that yourself?
The occupation of the VAA has been around for over hundred years. Virtual Author Assistants are well known inside the publishing industry, but not recognized by many outside of it. It is predicted that will change very soon because of the increasing numbers of authors who are getting published, either as independent publishers or via the more traditional route with established publishers.
The VAA is now a key component in the success of these entrepreneurial book publishing efforts as new authors are using virtual services of all kinds instead of hiring employees. Even established publishing companies themselves use virtual services.
One of the most important things when looking for a VAA is to make sure he or she provides the skills you need.
A Virtual Author Assistant Can Help You By:
Saving your valuable time. This is the top reason to hire an author assistant. Just because you CAN do a task does not mean it is cost effective. Most authors simply do not have enough time in the day to complete their writing and the other marketing and admin tasks they need to. By hiring a VAA the author has more time to focus on what only they can do, write!
Supporting and encouraging you. Having another passionate team member is valuable. A VAA can be that needed force to help overcome deadlines, bad days, and overwhelming times.
Motivation and goal setting. Sometimes you just need someone to keep track of things and keep you going towards your dreams. A VAA rock at that.
Ask yourself if there are things you know you should be doing but don’t have the time to accomplish without sacrificing sleep or writing time? Are you willing to delegate your work? If you answered yes to either of these questions it may be time to consider hiring a VAA. Don’t go it alone. Get the support you need and you will be well on your way to publishing success.
In my last blog, “Your Book,
Your Business,” I wrote about the many moving parts that make a successful
online marketing campaign work when it comes to promoting a book. In today’s post, I would like to delve deeper
into the one component that can be the most valuable of all: Blogging.
The BIG Deal about Blogs
Most writers know that a blog
can boost readership when combined with social media. They feel that blogs sort of pick up where
the short copy of social posts leaves off.
When you realize that posts to Facebook and Google+, not to mention
Twitter rely on short copy, then it only seems natural that blogposts would
make a natural springboard to posting longer copy that can provide more detail
and fill in the blanks. The problem with
this way of thinking is that it relegates a blog to kissing cousin status that denigrates
the blogpost to second class citizen. As
I will prove below, this way of thinking turns the power of blogging on its
head and reduces its effectiveness as an online marketing tool.
In the first place, blogging
can and should be the focus of your efforts online, if you are looking to build
a large, loyal following of readers who hang on your every word. Properly crafted and deployed, a blog can
inform, engage and convert large numbers of readers to come back week in and
week out to see what you have in store for them. It can build a bridge between author and
reader like nothing else. More
importantly, it can help you develop not only a relationship with readers, but
a database of large numbers of readers that you can use to spur sales and
reviews of your next book.
How big of a reader can you
create, you ask? Below is a screenshot
of my other blog, Working the Web to Win, which is the title of one of my
books. As you can see in the image below, we are currently
knocking on the million pageview mark.
Granted, it took four years and nearly 300 blogposts to do it. But it was well worth the effort. As you will notice from the stats, between
1,000 and 2,000 readers daily find their way to the WWW blog. Many of these readers are repeat customers
eager to read more about the ins and outs of the Internet, which is the main
theme of the blog and the accompanying book.
While the numbers are
impressive, so was the amount of staying power that it took to sustain the
effort. I’m talking four years of weekly
effort that saw me and my business partner post 1-2 blogs like clockwork. This meant not only coming up with a topic
every or two single week, but taking the time to craft a well thought out
blogpost of 1,000-2,000 words. These
weren’t what my business partner calls “Fat Tweets.” These are full blown magazine-quality
articles replete with accompanying photos or even videos that are
topic-related.
When most bloggers are happy
to put out 500-800 word posts, we were delivering four times that length. Why?
Because longer posts are far more engaging, they deliver more robust
content and last but not least they also allowed us to embed a couple of offers
on each blog that are designed to help us generate a database of prospects.
Fill out the form below to receive a FREE Author's Analysis
You’ll notice that two out of
the three above mentioned elements were expressly for the benefit of the
reader. If you want to generate a
massive audience, you need to keep that in mind. First and foremost, a blog needs to be
centered around your readers as opposed to yourself. If all you do is write about you, a reader is
going to look elsewhere for information and entertainment. Don’t delude yourself into thinking that
readers are interested in rhetoric. What
they really want is what I refer to as Infotainment. Give them a speech and they will not
return. Tell them how to save time or
money, impart an idea or skill that they have not before considered, or make
them laugh and you have set a hook in that reader that will allow you to reel
him or her in week in and week out.
Of course, the onus is on you
to produce weekly posts that grab a reader’s attention and make them come back
for more. The question is, do you have
the staying power to come up with a riveting post week in and week out. Make no bones about it, if you want to create
a massive following, you need to post at least one blog every week. Where most author bloggers fail is that they
put out a post every once in a while.
Then they lament the fact that they have precious little
readership. Is that what’s bothering you,
Bunky?
How to Put the Blogging Pedal to the Metal
When it comes to making the wheels of a blog
turn, there are three key elements:
1.Content
2.Consistency
3.Distribution
You’re a writer, right? So the content should come naturally. If you believe that, then I have some Florida
swampland that I can let you take off my hands.
If you are going to write a minimum of 52 posts per year for years on
end, you need to find a way inspiration for your blogs that doesn’t quit. Since I not only write my own blogs, but get
paid to ghostwrite other people’s blogs, let me clue you into the secret sauce
that will allow you to write blogs galore.
In the past 5 years, I have
written weekly blogs for everyone from chiropractors and eldercare providers,
to plumbers and replacement window dealers.
The way that I learned about all these varied topics was to research
them online. Instead of trying to
reinvent the wheel, I used the power of the Internet to roll out weekly blogs
on topics I know nothing about. This
boiled down to perusing competitor blogs and newsfeeds in order to find timely
and even trending topics that could be crafted into articles designed to engage
an audience. Crafting doesn’t mean plagiarizing. It means generating a germ of an idea that
can be used to generate a unique article.
Even though you may be an
expert in your own right, trying to come up with 52 articles each and every
year is more daunting a task than you might think. Let me give you another secret of my blogging
success. I call it putting on your
associate producer hat. In the TV
industry the associate producer is the person tasked with making sure all the
actors have their scripts, the guests are ready to join the talent on the set
and the lighting crew has done their part.
In short, the AA is a glorified gopher who is used to wearing a lot of
hats. Here’s how that applies to your
blogging efforts.
Every day you literally trip
over ideas for a blog or two. Whether it
occurs while you are reading or texting or going through your daily routine,
somewhere somehow an idea or an anecdote pops up that makes good fodder for a
blog. The problem is, if you don’t push
the pause button long enough to make a note of it, it’s gone forever. What’s even worse is that in today’s wired
world it couldn’t be easier to lay down the groundwork by using whatever device
comes to hand to jot it down or shoot a few frames of video to lay down the
foundation for a blog. By following this tenet, you will take two thirds of the
weight of producing worthwhile blogs off your shoulders.
Why You Need a Blog Buddy
This and working the web will
give you enough rope to start turning out weekly blogs that are informative and
entertaining. This leads us to the next
fly in the ointment: staying power. Enthusiasm
and good writing habits will only take you so far. What you need if you hope to be able to sustain the effort over the long haul is someone you can call on for feedback, somebody that you can bounce ideas off. In short, you need a blog buddy.
A blog buddy can be a fellow writer, an employee or a friend. The most important requirement of a blog buddy is that he or she gives you honest feedback. The last thing you want is to assign the task to a "Yes Man" who only tells you what you want to hear. Because if you hope to build a massive following, be prepared to invest a lot of time in the effort. We're talking years here.
While you may dream of having
a million readers, in the beginning you will only have a handful of the faithful. This leads to the last and most critical part of blogging success: Distribution. Unlike websites which are beholden to the whims of the search engines, blogs generate the majority of their readership from social networks. Your social networks. If you have thousands of followers, they can be leveraged to generate readership. If you have a few hundred, you have a problem. Of course, that doesn't mean you can't build a following. The question is, how to get the job done in as short a period of time as possible.
Remember, once published, a book has a relatively short shelf life. That means you need to have your audience ready to go. If not, you might want to consider hiring the job out. One of the ways we achieved nearly one million pageviews was by creating a system that helps our clients and ourselves to generate readership fast. We call it Team Tech. What Team Tech does is assign 5 non-competing businesses to read, comment on and repost blogs to Twitter, Facebook and Google+. When you consider the fact that blogs that are reposted generate a far wider distribution, this reciprocal system gets the job done in a hurry. An added benefit is that it also provides feedback from other readers. The bottom line is that if you are serious about building readership and with it an audience of loyal customers eager to buy your next book, you need to make blogging your best friend. Carl Weiss is president of Working the Web to Win and publisher of GoodBooks.Online. He has also written hundreds of magazine articles and blogs, plus 5 books.
